Slowly, Slowly.

I sat out on our back verandah last week and opened up a blank page. Finally. I'd checked off the boxes I wanted to for May. I was excited about this moment. With no custom orders, no real agenda to make for money, I had a BLANK PAGE!
And then I started to feel lost. I could make that quilt I'd been dreaming up. No. Not in the mood for that one. I could start a blog series on....no. Don't want to commit myself to a blog series. Maybe I could...Nah.
Argh. I started to feel antsy.

Then last Saturday, the lovely Janet, who had been stocking my work in her shop, closed up to travel overseas. On the way to collecting my things, I stopped of at the Olive Tree Markets, one of our city's most beautiful collections of local wares held under a massive fig tree. I'd been asked a couple of times if I would have a stall there, and then more recently, if I could sell my wares in their new shop, Olive & Co (which is in my old space!) but it's never really been the right time. It was just beautiful walking around, chatting to makers I'd met through having my shop. Could I/should I do it?
I brought my mass of pinnies and quilts home, hung them in my, now very tight, sunroom, where they have been pushing me ever since to make a decision about them.

So on Thursday, when I had a bit of time to myself, I decided to finish up the pinafores and some vests I'd put up and out of the way for later. They just needed top-stitching and pressing and tagging and then I could take the whole lot into the new shop before I picked up the kids from pre-school. But of course, my hopes were too big for my time frame, and I only got a fraction of the work done. Was this quick Thursday morning job going to take the rest of the month? Did I want to give my blank page to finishing off things that no longer inspired me?

I've been thinking (out loud, to Tim), the last couple of weeks about how long life takes. How sloooww it is. How I try to escape it but it seems to be the way things are made to be. If we want to finish something, we actually have to make it. If we want to read a book, we actually have to read it. (Yeah, I know, duh. But you know, instead of downloading it into our memory via bluetooth.) This parenting gig is the longest job I've ever had, full time or otherwise. And my kids aren't even school-aged. It takes long, slow, interrupted time to grow children and relationships and a garden and a peaceful home and a handful of quilts and pinafores to sell in town. The important things can't be fast-tracked or downloaded at high speed. They can't be crammed the night before like I spent my years of university doing. (And it worked for me back then!)

So I haven't really settled on June, at least, not what I want to make, with fabric. But I do want to take it at walking pace, to accept that sometimes choosing one thing means missing out on another (rather than clawing for them both). Something about the mantra of living in the moment has made me feel like this moment counts more than any other, like a toddler who falls apart because it's not going to plan right now. But maybe what counts in the moment is holding it lightly?

This morning Evie took herself outside and fell asleep in the pram. Sweet, I know, but totally throwing out my order for the day.
Slowly, slowly, I said to myself again. There's always tomorrow.